Andy Murray will spend next week mixing a welcome spot of rest with more intense practice as he tries to get his game in top gear for two months that could go a long way to defining whether 2012 is a success or not.
For the second time in the space of a week, the Scot found himself out-hit. Last week, it was by Tomas Berdych in the quarter-finals of the Monte Carlo Masters; yesterday it was Milos Raonic in the ATP event in Barcelona.
The Canadian is one of the rising stars on the tour and, on yesterday's form, it will not be long before he is regularly mixing it with Murray and the rest of the top players.
His monstrous serve – one delivery was tracked at 148mph on what was a cool morning – was backed up by powerful ground strokes as he sent Murray packing with a 6-4, 7-6 victory.
Murray will be smarting at losing to another big-hitter so soon after Berdych but he had warned his clay-court game takes a while to heat up and with three more matches under his belt, he is getting there slowly.
"Milos has always played well on hard courts; now he's a threat on all surfaces," Murray said. "He's got a huge serve so you must find ways to neutralise it. If you manage, you have options."
One poor game, at 3-3, cost him his own serve and Raonic, whose serve has drawn comparisons with Pete Sampras, held easily to take the first set.
Murray saved two break points to hold for 4-3 in the second but was broken in his next service game and though Raonic missed three smashes when trying to serve out for victory, he dominated the tie break to take it 7-3.
"It was important to play a few [more] matches on clay," Murray said. "I had some good tennis occasionally. But it's now important to be ready for the upcoming big events."
That will involve back-to-back Masters 1000 events; in Madrid a week on Monday – where the clay has been controversially dyed blue and then in Rome, with the French Open to follow at the end of next month.
It is a tough schedule and Murray admits he needs a few days' rest. "I've spent a lot of time away from home this year," he said. "I've been at home for about nine days and a lot of those days I'm [still] working.
"So I'm quite looking forward to having a little break and, hopefully, seeing some of my friends from when I practised in Spain [as a teenager].
"I've been playing pretty decent. I just need to brush up on one or two things and get on the practice courts."
It was Raonic's best win in terms of the ranking of his opponent and Rafael Nadal, cruising in the other half of the draw, may keep a close eye on him when he takes on Spaniard David Ferrer in the semi-finals today.
Nadal, who made mincemeat out of Janko Tipsarevic with a 6-2, 6-2 win yesterday, will take on Fernando Verdasco of Spain.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article